Visiting Helsinki and Tallinn

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Helsinki

Sunday, 12 July 2009

KLM brought me from Berlin Tegel to Helsinki Vantaa. Tegel
is my favorite airport because the gates are numbered beginning with 0.
The next morning I was late for breakfast because Finland is one hour
ahead of central Europe. Walked around town all day. First west to the
Hietelahti Sandviken harbor, where a large flea market offers used clothes
and all sorts of old junk. The Boulevardi, later renamed Boulevarden,
road leads back to the center. It's quiet, lined with old trees,
with many beautiful old buildings on both sides. It later turns into
Eteläesplanadi, which parallels a narrow pedestrian street away from
the traffic. All Helsinki statues have a pigeon perched on their heads.

Eteläesplanadi

Kauppatori with Tuomiokirkko in the background

Berry vendor on Kauppatori

Eteläesplanadi ends at Kauppatori at the edge
of the ferry harbor. There is a small farmer's market selling mainly
berries. The line of beautiful buildings continue alongside Kauppatori,
and leads to the gorgeous orthodox Uspenski cathedral with small onion
domes on the eastern end of the harbor. Unfortunately the cathedral is
hidden by a blocky modern monstrosity that does its best to brutally
destroy the otherwise wonderful architectural ensemble. Inside, the
cathedral looks exactly like an orthodox cathedral is supposed to look:
a huge altar, innumerable gold and silver statues and icons everywhere,
and ropes to keep the tourists' grubby hands from touching.

Pigeon on a statue's head

Uspenski cathedral

Helsinki escaped the second world war almost undamaged,
and it's fantastic to walk its streets and enjoy the architectural
masterpieces from the 18th and 19th century. Of course, it didn't
completely escape damage done by modern "architects" to whom architecture
means stacking as many concrete floors as possible, and selecting a
facade style that gets replicated without further thought or variation
all over the outside walls. The sixties and seventies saw most of these
offenders; later decades occasionally allowed a little thought or taste
to soften the faceless concrete monoliths blighting modern cities. But
there is much less damage of this kind here than in other cities.

The cathedral is on a little hill with a great view over
the ferry harbor to the west, and a yacht harbor (Pohjoissatama Norra
hamnen) to the north. In the middle of the ferry harbor is a little
island, Tervasaari Tjärholmen, that is a beautiful small landscaped
park. Spent an hour sitting in the sun and watching people relaxing and
whiling away this sunny Sunday afternoon.

Pohjoissatama Norra hamnen

jäätelöä - ice cream

Looping further around the edge of the yacht harbor
brought me to Kluuvi Gloet, Helsinki's botanical garden. It's small but
beautiful, with a huge variety of meticulously labeled flowers, trees,
and other plants. In the center is a row of old greenhouses with desert
and tropical plants. The botanical garden is free; the greenhouse charges
a small admission.

On the way back from the botanical garden I passed the
protestant Tuomiokirkko cathedral, a huge gleaming church overlooking a
large square. There is a huge stairway leading up to the church; lots of
people hang out there. The church is completely dominating the skyline
with its blinding white columns, porticos, and domes on the outside,
but inside it's unremarkable except for a huge organ.

Tuomiokirkko

Across the square from Tuomiokirkko

Helsinki's metro is so close to the center of the planet
that enormously long escalators are needed to reach the tunnels. Like
the rest of Helsinki's public transportation system, it's modern, clean,
and efficient. Since returning from
China, Tibet, Nepal, and India, I keep noticing how clean and and
well-organized European cities are.

Monday, 13 July 2009

Yesterday's weather forecast was rainy, so it was hot
and sunny. Today's forecast was sunny, so it's raining. I thought, let's
hit the museums then, but it's a Monday so most are closed. The Helsinki
City Museum near the protestant church is small but very nicely done, and
explains Finland's history as part of Sweden, during Russian occupation
during most of the 19th century, and as an independent nation after 1917.

Next I went to the Design Museum, but it's not very
interesting - most of it is textiles, mostly carpets. They try to
demonstrate unique Finnish design but don't say what that means; there
are no explanations and no comparisons. My best guess based on the
exhibits is that Finnish design is recognizable by its bright colors
and 60's shapes. There is a small furniture section and an even smaller
industrial technology section, which I was hoping for. Being Finnish,
it mostly consists of a display of mobile telephones. Did it really take
only 28 years to go from that gas canister sized machine to the iPhone?

In the evening, I went to see a friend at Kerava, 35km
north of Helsinki. It's only 30 minutes by train, but Kerava has the
feel of a small village in the middle of a forest; their house almost
blends into the forest at the foot of a low hill. All houses have a
sauna. We walked some trails, and the children were seeking out wild
blueberries and strawberries the size of peas on the forest floor. They
ate some and carried others home, where they turned them into wild berry
smoothies. Far more delicious that any of the big shiny strawberries
found in a supermarket at home. Twenty hours of daylight works miracles.

Statues at the entrance to the main train station

Wild strawberries are very small

I brought a gift of chocolates, which I bought at
Stockmann's department store. It's very large, one of the largest in
Scandinavia, and supposed to be quite upscale. Just the right place to get
a fancy gift I thought, having pictures of KaDeWe, Galeries Lafayette,
and Harrod's in my mind. Stockmann's doesn't begin to measure up to
those though, it's cheaply decorated and upscale only in price, less so
in quality and selection. As a tourist, it's often difficult to find
the best places, going for the biggest buildings or the biggest ads
doesn't work.

Porvoo

Tuesday, 14 July 2009

Took a bus to Porvoo, a town 50km east of Helsinki. The
old part of town feels very nordic - low wooden houses, brightly colored,
and narrow cobblestoned roads. Along the river, there is a promenade
and a series of old dark red wooden houses that have become a landmark
for Porvoo. Today they are souvenir shops. A little distance further
up the river, the town ends and gives way to little meadows, forests,
and a small boat harbor.

Landmark red wooden houses in Porvoo

The town rises up on a low hill, with a moderately large
but unassuming church on top. It has a separate belltower. The church
burned down a few years ago but has been restored. Old crooked trees
provide shade along the edge of the churchyard. The view from up there
over the town and the river is great.

A pair of roads near the river have been turned
into a tourist zoo, with souvenir shops, overpriced restaurants, and
galleries. It's still old and pleasant, but tour buses disgorge loads of
people here so it's not quiet like the rest of the old town. I had lunch
at the Timbaali restaurant. I asked the waitress for a typical Finnish
dish, and she recommended the fish buffet. Seven types of fish, marinated,
steamed, and fried; Salmon, herring, and trout. Ok but not great.

Old town of Porvoo

Old town meets new town

Mannerheiminkatu is a road the crosses the river and
neatly divides the old town from the new town. It's an ugly concrete and
steel bridge that runs just meters past a wonderful old brickwork pub,
and blights the waterfront view. The new town is bright and clean and
completely forgettable. The bus takes an hour and ten minutes to get
there from Helsinki's main bus station. Bought ferry tickets to Tallinn.

Finns seem to tend to the overweight. The older people
are, the more excess weight they seem to have.

In a K supermarket, they had half a dozen game
machines that looked a little like slot machines, and two old ladies
were vigorously punching buttons. Bought a kilo of strawberries at a
farmer's market, great but still not quite as good as the wild ones.

Helsinki again

Wednesday, 15 July 2009

Walked around the southern end of the city, along the
shoreline. Helsinki is a green city, there are lots of trees and little,
and not so little, parks. And unlike Paris, Helsinki takes good care
of its waterfront and puts little parks and green walking trails there.
The destination was Kauppatori, where most of the ferries leave. I got
on one to Suomenlinna, an island just in sight of the shore. It used
to be an old Swedish military fort, and later a Russian fort, but today
it's an Unesco World Heritage park for its military installations.

The ramparts and walls are built from large rough stone
walls. Many are preserved, although kind of grown over. Many of the
old barracks are also still there, and a large shipyard with a huge dry
dock. The dock is still used to keep ships safe in the winter.

Suomenlinna island in Helsinki

Suomenlinna is actually four islands connected by short
bridges. A marked trail runs past the main attractions. But for me, the
real attraction weren't the King's Gate and other landmarks, but just the
scenery - much of the southern islands is a landscaped park, with lawns,
trees, hiking paths, and scenic rocky beaches. Helsinki is built on very
old granite bedrock, and it is exposed in Suomenlinna as flat granite
hills and at the beach. Many people sit on the grass or on the rocks
overlooking the sea, and in the many small cafes. Suomenlinna's history
is military but now it's a very peaceful and beautiful place.

Back in Helsinki, I bought more of those wonderful
strawberries and blueberries. A liter of blueberries (they measure berries
by volume, not weight) was too much, so I asked for half a liter, and
got a Solomonic solution: the vendor divided a basket in two, and then
asked which half I wanted. A wise man.

The city's tourist maps, and the Lonely Planet, recommend
a walking trail through Helsinki. In the early morning, and on the first
day, I covered the southern part (and much of the remaining area there),
so I went and looked at the northern part in the afternoon.

Suomenlinna fortifications

On the way to the western shore I passed the Sibelius
monument, a mask and a large set of vertical steel tubes welded together
to look like a dozen church organs on LSD having an orgy. I had to
wait quite a while for a busload of English-speaking tourists to waddle
out of my picture. Sibelius is Finland's greatest composer.

Sibelius monument

The "official" trail turns south towards
Töölö from there but on recommendation of a friend I turned
north, followed the shoreline (more green trails, I didn't have to use
roads) to the Seurasaari island, connected by a white wooden bridge. There
are no roads on the island, just paths and hiking trails. It's forested,
and hidden in the forest are numerous blockhouses, barns, churches,
and boathouses complete with "church boats" that were transplanted or
reconstructed from their original locations in the country. Those huts
are amazingly small.

Historic storage hut on Seurasaari island

Costumed women on Seurasaari island

After nine hours of walking I decided to take the bus
back to the hotel.

Tallinn in Estonia

Thursday, 16 July 2009

Took the Linda Lines ferry boat to Tallinn at 8:00. I
had a ticket, but I couldn't get on board with it. A gratuitous act of
bureaucracy required me to stand in line for a long time again in order
to get another receipt tacked onto the ticket, which was then torn off
again by an official a few meters to the side. Anyway, I made it onto
the ferry in time. It takes 90 minutes to reach Tallinn, the capital of
Estonia across the Baltic Sea. Most people do this as a day excursion
from Helsinki, but I had a hotel room for the night.

Helsinki is a major European Union capital, and it
shows. It has a beautiful and mostly undamaged historical downtown,
but it's as frantic and has as much traffic as any other city that
size. Tallinn is the capital of Estonia, but it works differently. Its
downtown is walled and effectively isolated from the rest of the
city. Outside you find the usual wide streets choked with traffic,
office towers, and malls, but inside the walls time has stopped three -
maybe six - centuries ago.

In most other European capitals, rational city planning
has organized streets into grids, stars, rings, and axes of sight in the
eighteenth or nineteenth century. The old center of Paris was rebuilt by
Haussmann to replace the crooked mazes of alleys with wide boulevards. No
such thing has happened in Tallinn's historical downtown. It's all
narrow cobbled streets, mostly curved, and no two are parallel. There
are buildings dating back to the 15th century, although the majority is
from the 17th. Virtually no building was built in the last century.

It's quite touristy - tour guides earnestly carry yellow
signs with a tour number to hold together their flock of Americans or
Germans, and clog streets and churches when the group stops to explain
some irrelevant historical fact or another. I dislike tour groups, they
all study the trees and miss the forest. There are so few places where
modernity was prevented from cutting into historical city centers. Despite
the tourists, the souvenir shops, and the outdoor restaurants, Tallinn
feels authentic and charming, and not tacky at all. Tallinn felt like
Prague's little relaxed brother to me - not as big, as opulent, or as
ostentatious as Prague, but more authentic, quiet, and restful.

View from the city hall tower

Main square in Tallinn

The old downtown is too far from the sea to include any
waterfronts, but it has a hill on top of one part of the ramparts, with
the old palace, the orthodox Alexander Nevski cathedral, and the Lutheran
Toomkirik church on top, as well as the outskirts of the old town with
many streets winding up the hill. The Nevski cathedral looks as gilded
as any other orthodox church, although less overbearing as the one in
Helsinki. The Lutheran church is quite austere except for the countless
bombastic painted wooden coats of arms on its inside walls. They don't
seem too well organized, you can almost see the janitor searching for
an empty spot anywhere to tack on each one as they came in.

I spent some eight hours walking nearly all downtown
streets, discovering new gems all the time. There are several great
viewpoints on the palace hill, and the panorama from the city hall tower
is fantastic. The tower is 34m tall and very narrow, with a very steep
spiral staircase inside. It almost looks like a minaret. The square at
the city hall is the heart of Tallinn's downtown, lined by - what else
- beautiful ancient houses with steep roofs and outdoor restaurants
in front.

In Helsinki, everybody speaks perfect English. I am
told that there are too few Finns to translate movies and TV series into
Finnish worthwhile, so they hear a lot of English with subtitles. However,
that doesn't seem to work too well in Estonia; many people speak English
quite poorly. My waitress at the Talukõrts restaurant, for example,
was unable to explain what "National Drink" on the menu means. (I ordered
it anyway but she returned to tell me that they don't actually have any.)
She also offered fried potatoes, which turned out to be French fries,
and apple juice, which turned out to be orange juice. With ice cubes.

Gate between the new and old towns of Tallinn

Bastion towers seen from the palace hill

I really tried to get authentic Estonian food, even though
I was warned that this leaves me only a choice of what kind of meat
I want with my potatoes and pickled vegetables. My waitress assured me
that Wiener Schnitzel is definitely Estonian. I went for the pepper steak,
which turned out to be a slice of beef tough as leather, with a gob of raw
horseradish on top but no pepper, soaked in an undefinable brown sauce.
I did check out the menus of dozens of restaurants, but they are almost
indistinguishable - they all have Italian-ish dishes like pasta and pizza,
stuffed chicken, and potatoes, regardless of whether they call themselves
a pizzeria, grill, restoran, or bar, or all four simultaneously.
The only exceptions were a Chinese and a Thai restaurant, both of which
also had Italian-ish dishes on the menu.

I did not find a juice bar or ice cream parlor in
Tallinn. Helsinki has ice cream stands all over the place, memorize the
word "Jäätelöä". (All Finnish words are packed with
too many vowels and umlauts.)

The Estonians have their own currency, called EEK
(Estonian Kronas). But pretty much everyone accepts euros as well, at a
rate of about 15 EEK for one euro. In one place I have seen US dollars
accepted - 2 euro or 4 US$. Apparently they are a little ahead of the
times, maybe they don't want to repaint their sign weekly as the dollar
keeps sliding... The Finns use plastic money for everything, but Tallinn
is more normal, people use cash. My guesthouse only accepts cash,
for example, unusual for a hotel.

In Helsinki, one can occasionally find an open
WLAN. Coverage is better than in other cities, but still quite spotty. In
Tallinn, there are very few networks. Also missing are Helsinki's
ubiquitous surveillance cameras. It seems that Helsinki is second only
to London, where there is one camera for every three citizens to prevent
people, who evidently aren't trusted by the government as a matter of
principle, from enjoying any shred of privacy.

Friday, 17 July 2009

A Linda Lines ferry brought me back to Helsinki the next
morning, after walking around for a couple of hours in beautifully clear
sunny weather. Had unimpressive lunch in Helsinki, spent some time in
Helsinki's many beautiful parks, had a couple of Finnish ice creams,
and took the 615 bus back to the airport.

I have deleted my flickr albums because I no longer trust US
cloud services.